Head coach Jeff Losch saw his team's season end unexpectedly following the loss to Freehold Borough in the sectional semifinal.Martin Griff/The Times

HOPEWELL – Playing catch-up in a state tournament game is a hard thing to do.
Just ask the Hopewell Valley High School girls’ basketball team that dug itself a 12 point hole in the first quarter and never recovered en route to a 59-34 loss to Freehold Borough in the Central Jersey Group III semifinals Saturday night.

The talented Colonials move on to face another Shore power, Neptune, which stunned top-seeded Middletown South in the other sectional semifinal.

Everything was set for Hopewell Valley to host the Central Jersey Group III finals once the word spread that Neptune had beaten Middletown South. Unfortunately for the locals, that scenario didn’t materialize as the Colonials took over the game. They came out and shot well, executed their offense, played solid defense and was overall the better team.

Hopewell got down in the first quarter 15-3 when it could only manage a three-point bucket by Kara Hageman 2:30 into the game. Freehold Borough ran off nine straight to end the quarter as it was deadly (3-for-4) from three in the quarter.

In the second quarter, coach Jeff Losch’s squad cut the lead to 20-11 with 3:05 left before half on a Hageman follow. The Colonials immediately responded with threes from Sophia Duffy and Kim Dana and by the half were up by a comfortable margin, 29-18.

“We didn’t even say anything about the game in the locker room afterwards,’’ said Losch. ‘‘These seniors have had three 20-win seasons and we’ve only had four in school history and they’re part of three of them and that was huge. ‘‘

Losch did eventually go over the nuts and bolts of his team’s loss.

“We didn’t have any shots falling in the first and we’ve had games where that’s happened before but we were always able on defense to get a hand in the face and get some defensive rebounds. We didn’t today and we compounded that with some mental breakdowns.

“The third quarter there was a stretch where we were trading baskets, but you can’t be trading baskets when you’re down like we were. We’ve had quarters where we only scored 3 or 5 points this season, but we didn’t make that many lapses on defense or give up the offensive rebounds like we did today.”

Losch was dejected his team didn’t come away with the win, but recognized just how good a team Freehold really was.

“When you’ve got a team with three girls who started for four years that’s a nice thing to have and two of them are 1.000 point scorers and obviously very skilled,” said Losch.

Hopewell Valley knew that it would have to come out in the third quarter and reestablish itself if it wanted to make it a game, but Freehold went on an 11-5 run and bolted to a 40-23 lead after another l3-pointer from Duffy (15 points) with three minutes left.

Hopewell Valley got six points in the quarter from Liz Mintz and a putback from Ellen Griffin, but that was all it could muster as its season came to an abrupt end.

“They were a really good team. I definitely think we were evenly matched with them but this wasn’t our time,” said a tearful senior Nellie Tanguay. “Getting behind like we did sort of dented us a little bit, but I don’t think we ever gave up, never settled down and we weren’t ever satisfied with just scoring one basket. But it was hard to stop them because they got on a couple of nice rolls.’’